At Tommy's Place
by Kibasgirltsumi
Summary: A series of short-stories taking place three years after the end of The Last of Us. Scenes of what Joel and Ellie's lives have become.
1. Soccer

The only thing that kept Ellie at all grounded was the memory of the Winter three years ago. Ellie had been alone and more terrified than she'd ever been. Joel was out of the game; fading in and out of delirious consciousness due to a festering puncture wound in his side. He was holed up in a shed only a few degrees warmer than the outside. Ellie had been expecting him to die days ago. Part of her couldn't believe it, that Joel was capable of death. He'd walked her through so many lethal situations in the past that he seemed more immune to the apocalypse than she was.

But it hadn't been a bite, or a scratch, it had been a rusty pole that ate its way through his muscles and flesh and bone. And people could still get infected, if not with the virus. And his skin smelled like rot.

She'd gone out hunting; her appetite never faded and she'd been keeping Joel sustained on rabbits. But that day she'd gotten lucky and caught a stag. But it had led her, with all of its dying strength, into a horror story. She met David, who seemed weak and friendly (which was all a convincing façade that Ellie hadn't fallen for, but that didn't matter regardless), and they ended up fighting off a horde of clickers and one very persistent bloater while his friend went back to camp to bring medicine. Ellie had decided that penicillin, an actual chance to save Joel, was worth her difficult catch. She'd only had time to deliver it though, before David caught up and revealed his true nature. And that nature was cannibalism.

She'd led him away from Joel, and fought of a dozen on David's stupid men who tried frying her with moltovs before he snuck up and choked her out. She'd woken up in a cold cell, to the lovely sight of David's friend chopping off a corpse's arm.

A few charming conversations later, she herself was on the chopping board. She revealed her old bite wound to his friend, and in their hesitation, she pulled a few panicked stunts and escaped. For the next horrifying hour, she evaded them in their maze of a camp, hiding in the blazing snow. The moment she snuck inside on old steakhouse, David found her. He seemed a little upset, because he caught the place on fire before searching for her. She must have stabbed him four times before he knocked her out, all the while the fire crept closer, thickening the air with smog and burning Ellie's frostbitten skin. It was the worst though when he ducked behind the bars as well, sneaking along like she thought only Joel could do. She was certain that he could hear her heart, beating more rapidly than the stag's.

She'd finally killed him. Just as the fire whorled around her little island of safety, she retrieved her knife from under a stool and stabbed him well into death. She wasn't going to stop though; she meant to turn his skull to pulp, but a firm hand grabbed her arm. She tried to stab it as well; maybe David's arm had detached and crept up behind her. She didn't stop struggling until the arms forced her to look. Joel, a little pale and scruffy from the lack of shaving, but it was him. She dropped the knife and broke into sobs that Joel soon quieted.

They left together and made their way to Utah.

Of course that had been a dead-end as well. Ellie woke up after drowning, in a sheer dress, in the backseat of a new car that Joel was driving. He promised her that the Firefly's had others like her and didn't need her now. They'd given up on trying to find a cure. Ellie was too tired for some reason to go into a debate, so she slept it off.

She persisted with the questions when she woke. They were returning to Tommy's.

It was so abrupt. Ellie hadn't even seen a Firefly, especially not gotten to talk to one. Joel disregarded the topic with the same starkness that he once avoided talk about his daughter. Ellie knew in her gut, even though she asked him to swear that he was telling the truth, that he was lying. About something.

But when she asked for him to be honest and he said yes, Ellie believed him.

He was lying about something, but he was telling the truth that they didn't need to, or couldn't, go to the Fireflies. She never stopped wondering what it was; _didn't need to_ or _couldn't_.

But in return for his stubbornness in one topic, he became more open in others.

Some of the kids were kicking around a soccer ball in one of the fields, and Ellie joined in as a goalie. She was at least twice the size of any of the kids, since there were so few her own age, that everyone wanted her on their team. So she took turns and beat each little group of kids one after the next. But since it was in turns, no one cried.

She started getting hungry and realized she'd been playing for hours. The sun was setting behind the pines and tin roofs of the houses. She took a deep breath, smelling rain, and kicked the ball into her hands.

"You're not too bad." Joel said. Ellie spun around, twirling the ball between her fingers.

"Not _too bad_? Did you see me- I was _demolishing_ those five-year-olds." She tossed him the ball and his arms jumped out to catch it. "Do you play?" She asked. He tapped the ball and shook his head, then tossed it back to her.

"I helped coach a little league team once." He said. "Sarah was the real star, makin' sense out of my coaching." Ellie nodded, thinking of a careful response. It had been twenty-five years since he'd lost his daughter, but he'd only started talking about her when Ellie had met him. And most of it had been threats for her to shut up. So it was still a pleasant surprise when he brought her up on his own. Ellie wanted to encourage him, not shut him down.

"You as a coach? Hmm, well you seemed to know your stuff when you taught me how to swim." She said. Joel nodded again.

"Well, you weren't too hopeless either."

"Did your team ever win anything?" Ellie asked, casually drawing the subject back to Sarah.

"She got second place in this tournament we used to hold." He said, then reached into his back pocket and pulled out a photo. It was faded and scratched and there was a crack starting down the middle from all the times of folding it, but Ellie recognized Joel, younger and without so much of the beard, with a happy blond girl, Sarah. Ellie recognized the picture also, Marie had given it to her to give to Joel.

"I know this picture." Ellie said, nodding. Joel folded it up again.

"I bet you do. Now c'mon, Tommy's coming over for dinner, remember?" He said. Ellie glanced at her muddied jeans and Joel sighed. "You're seventeen now, but all I see is that scruffy fourteen-year old." He said, starting off. Ellie ran ahead of him, jogging backwards.

"Scruffy? I wasn't scruffy!"

"You were the scruffiest kid I'd ever laid eyes on." He said, pushing her out of his path. Ellie bounced the soccer ball off his back and he flinched.

"And you weren't? Come on, your _beard_." He turned around, hand on his chin.

"What about my beard?"

"That was the scruffy thing." She said, slipping past him into the house.


	2. Swimming

Ellie had one hand latched firmly onto the tree's root, and the other hovered uncertainly, fighting the urge to reach back as well. The tree had grown, vigorously like every other plant seemed to after the infection broke out, and its roots were strong and held her weight easily.

"Ellie." Joel said, and she looked up at him. He was a few feet away, waist-deep in the water. "Come on, you jumped off of a bridge once, into rapids. This should be nothin'."

"There was a_ tank_ trying to blow us up." Ellie retorted, flexing her fingers over the damp bark. She was only in to her knees, but the lake dropped off suddenly near her toes. She was supposed to sink in and push herself into the water, then somehow swim to Joel. "Can't you give me any pointers?" She persisted. "You know, so I just don't sink." Joel gave a heavy sigh.

"Okay, well…you just do it. It's instinct." Ellie rolled her eyes. "Push off into the water and kick your legs. I'm right here if anything goes wrong." She swallowed and looked up at him for verification. He just nodded slightly. She gave a loud sigh of her own, and sunk into the cold water. Before she could reconsider any more, she pushed off with her feet and drifted into the deep-end. She started sinking, and impulsively righted herself and started smacking her arms up and down. Her legs, not that she was aware of them, dangled limply below. Joel reached out and caught her arm, pulling her to the shallower bank where he stood. "You didn't use your legs." He said. She held onto him like he were that tree's roots.

"Oh? Legs, ha. That sounds like a good idea." She said, reaching with her toes for the ground they shared. She could just reach it.

"Okay, you ready? Try again, you can do it." He said. Ellie nodded and pushed herself away from him back toward the land. She still flailed with her arms, but her legs joined in that time, and she made it to the other side. She spat out the water she'd swallowed and pulled herself up beside the tree.

"How was that?" She called back. Joel shrugged.

"You're getting' there." He replied. "Now come on back." Ellie gave a reluctant groan, but she was also glad for their lessons. Even if the water was cold, it at least tasted fresh. And she'd_ asked_ him to teach her swimming anyways. When she reached Joel again, he pulled her by the back of her shirt and dragged her along the top of the water, as she kicked and stroked and breathed a little easier until he let her on her own again.

After a while, she even started to enjoy it. Something that had terrified her for fifteen years was suddenly fun. She'd never felt so weightless before. All her life she'd been lugging around backpacks. It started as a simple knapsack with her lunch for the day, then a semi-heavy school backpack filled with paper _and_ lunch. Then nobody went to school anymore, and her backpack became heavy with knives…and lunch. At Tommy's settlement, she walked around with her weapons and backpack like she always had, but she and Joel were the only ones, except for the patrol, that persisted. One day the kids asked her to come and play, and she forgot her things in her room. She didn't even remember them until dinnertime. She'd stopped carrying the full backpack, only her knife, on a regular basis. She never forgot that comforting weight against her hip again.

But _swimming_. She didn't even have to support her own _body_ weight. She turned onto her back and floated. She still had to give little kicks every now and then to stay on the surface, but it was mostly her expanding lungs that held her in place. The current was weak and she hardly even drifted, but the clouds overhead moved swiftly towards Tommy's.

"Another storm." Joel said, walking up beside her. She was drifting in water that only went up to his knees. She let her legs sink until she touched the bottom, then pulled her water-heavy self up.

"So? We're already soaked." She said.

"Yeah, but Tommy always needs help rounding up the stuff and the horses." Ellie crossed her arms and nodded.

"Ugh, I still feel bad about Callus." She mumbled.

"I'm sure he was very brave." Joel said, but Ellie couldn't exactly tell if he were mocking her or not. "After all, he had to live with that ridiculous name for months."

"It was a good name." Ellie insisted, following him up the ridge.

Heavy thunder slammed down onto the treetops as they reached the main path. Ellie looked up warily, a little excited too. She was still getting used to the outside world, and sure, there were storms in Boston, but nothing like the lightning and monsoons she'd seen at Tommy's.

"Ellie!" Joel shouted, already far ahead. "Come on." Ellie started jogging to catch up, then broke into a frenzied sprint. The next roll of thunder, a loud crack and slam, nearly drowned out her warning. But when she needed to be, she was louder than any storm.

"Joel! _Behind you_!" Out of the thicket had come a group of runners. Joel swung his arm and smashed his fist into the throat of the nearest one without hardly looking; pure, raw instinct. Then the other three closed in. Ellie grabbed her knife and stabbed a decaying woman in the neck. She was wearing flannel, like she and Joel wore often, as if she'd been a game hunter. But none of that mattered anymore. Even hunters could get infected if they couldn't run fast enough, or kept running instead of silencing themselves. It was a strange thing becoming the prey after years of being the hunter.

She fell back and landed on top of Ellie. She squirmed out, kicking the body away, and picked up a fallen pine branch with both hands. With a shout, she slammed it into a runner's head. There was a snap, of bark and bone, and the runners stumbled back. Ellie hit it again with the branch, and the bark splintered and shattered under the force, and the runner tumbled down the ravine. She dropped what remained of the branch and looked at Joel. He'd fist-fought the other two into pulp, like she'd seen him do a dozen times.

"You okay?" She asked, after swallowing. He nodded.

"Wasn't expecting that." He said with a shrug.

"Well we are outside of the settlement." She replied, chewing on her thumb to dislodge a splinter. He nodded, rolling his shoulder.

"Okay, c'mon, we'll burn them tomorrow." He said, nodding back at the bodies before jogging off. Ellie glanced back once more, then hurried to catch up before the rain started falling.


End file.
